


Waffle Wars

by elanev91



Series: Wars [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: But he's not around for long, F/M, M/M, also there's a campus cop at the end, there is some mention of smoking weed here so heads up if that's not your thing, there's only one waffle maker, this is pure stupidity and I know it okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26747830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanev91/pseuds/elanev91
Summary: There's only one waffle maker in the dining hall and it literally always breaks. So, naturally, the only reasonable course of action is to meticulously map out when it's working and, ultimately, do a heist.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: Wars [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/761049
Comments: 44
Kudos: 117





	Waffle Wars

**Author's Note:**

> To celebrate the fact that I'm finished editing the fifth (!) draft of my novel and I honestly love the shit out of it, I wrote this stupid story about a broken waffle maker. Does it make sense? No. Do I care? Also no.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to @professor-riddikulus who definitely gave me this idea. He’s a genius
> 
> Also I'm stressed about the election so this is probably crazier than usual okay whatever anyway enjoy! x

James isn't proud of it, but he can't say that he's necessarily _surprised_ to find himself sitting in front of the Dean of Students.

He'd thought that it might be for something a bit more interesting (or, at the very least, more daring) than waffles, but, really, he supposes that it was always going to come to this in the end.

'Mr Potter.' Minnie — er, Dr. McGonagall — has had her forehead pressed against her hands, her fingers in a steeple grip, for the last five minutes, but she's looking at him now and she looks like she's probably about three seconds away from killing him (and would do if it weren't illegal in the state of California). 'I've heard from the campus police officer that you were found at the scene last night. I'd like to hear your side of the story.'

She pauses, looking at him with her sharp grey eyes like if she stares enough, the truth will start leaking out of his pores.

James takes a deep breath and leans back a little in his seat, his elbow coming up to rest on the arm of the chair. He looks like he could be anywhere — the beach, the ski lift, at his favourite table in Village — and that, probably, inspires what he says next.

'Professor, I don't know how much help I'll be able to be. I don't know anything.'

* * *

Before he was sitting in Minerva McGonagall's office one wrong word away from either expulsion or murder, he supposes he was in his dorm room. Like, obviously right before this meeting (which was at an absolutely _criminal_ nine A.M.), but he's thinking about the beginning of this, the beginning of the story he isn't going to tell, and he supposes that it started, as most things seemed to, in his dorm room.

'You know, it's really a crime about the food at this place.' Sirius says. He's sitting on the floor up against the futon, elbow deep in a bag of Carolina barbecue chips that's bigger than his torso and flying high after his most recent trip to the dispensary. He used to gravitate towards other things while stoned out of his mind, but a certain southerner in Sirius' queer literature course has got him jonseing for the sweet, sweet tang of the south. It's the only noticeable evidence of Sirius' actual feelings, the fact that he now orders these chips in bulk on Amazon, and, though James really wants to tease him about it, it's also the first time he's ever seen Sirius feel anything other than annoyed lust.

Still, James isn't sure the boba place on Vermont Ave will ever financially recover from Sirius' sudden heartsick abandonment.

'What exactly is the crime?' Remus, the southerner in question, is currently laying on James and Sirius' futon, his long legs stretched out in front of him and taking up half the walking space in their shockingly small (for the price they're paying for it) dorm room. He reaches out and grabs the bag of chips out of Sirius' hand and all the proof James needs that Sirius is in love comes in the absence of Sirius' immediate revenge for daring to take food out of his very high hands.

'The fucking waffle maker,' Sirius says. He's watching Remus stuff neat little stacks of chips into his mouth and, honestly, James feels a little obscene even noticing it. Still, at the mention of the waffle maker, he groans and lets his own head fall back (a very long way back) onto the back of his desk chair.

'We cannot be talking about the waffle maker again.'

'We can be.' Sirius sits up straighter, his hands slipping a little on the tile floor as he tries to push himself upright. 'I pay eighty thousand American dollars to go here and I can't get a decent fucking waffle.'

Remus hands Sirius the chips back. 'I don't understand why you're so fixated on the waffles. They have other food at the Village. And better food than waffles.'

'They're —' Sirius shoves his whole arm into the bag and practically unhinges his jaw to stuff in what has to be half the bag's remaining contents. 'The fact that you don't immediately agree with me on this is grounds for expulsion from the group.'

Remus just laughs. 'I think I add more to this _group_ that your little duo had to begin with.'

James snorts under his breath. As wonderful as he and Sirius are — and, really, they are wonderful — he also knows that Remus is ten thousand percent correct in his assessment of the pair of them.

Sirius rolls his eyes and flicks his hair back over his shoulder with a swift jerk of the head. 'I call bullshit. But _anyway_ ,' he raises his voice because Remus has opened his mouth again to say god knows what. 'I'm going to need someone to sympathise with me here. Like, right now, I'd love to go, get a thick, buttery waffle, and use it to soak up all the THC currently coursing through my veins. But can I do that?' Sirius sounds like he's a politician in a film making a rousing speech to an audience he's trying to win over. 'No, I can't. I can't because some asshole probably got there first and used it, like, an hour again, and now the fucking thing isn't going to work for the next three days.'

'I think it works like once a day,' Remus points out, but Sirius just holds up his hand.

'Let him have his hyperbole, Remus,' James says, 'it's all he has.'

Sirius gives him the finger. 'I also have my rugged good looks.'

This time James and Sirius both laugh.

'You certainly have good looks,' Remus says, 'but I don't think anyone would call them _rugged_.'

James nods. 'Yeah, that's more my department.'

He's not even annoyed when Sirius and Remus both laugh.

The thing about the waffles — because, even though it seems like a stupid aside, a one-off conversation, for the three of them, it is definitely a _thing_ — is that, really, Sirius isn't wrong, the waffle maker in the Village Dining Hall really is absolutely fucking abysmal. At first, they'd thought that it was just always broken because it never seemed to be working when they got there, but then Remus — who had the utter misfortune of an 8am — reported that, no, he had, in fact, seen it working before.

That he'd even managed to _make_ one before and that it was 'honest to god, the best fucking waffle I've ever had in my life', and as happy as James had been for Remus and his breakfast-related triumphs, he'd also wished that he'd never fucking mentioned it because at least when the waffle maker was "broken" he didn't feel like he was living in constant absence of buttery, syrupy, waffle-pillowy goodness.

That's Sirius' description more than James', but James has to admit, it's a good one (Sirius credits it all to his "now incredible understanding of the creative use of the written word" that he'd apparently developed after three weeks in that queer literature course where he spent 95% of his time staring at Remus and the remaining time emailing his professor with questions that were definitely answered in the syllabus).

And so it had become a thing, the fact that these waffles were out there on campus, were out there in the world, and no one was apparently able to get them unless they were some horrible person who was up at seven am (horrible excluding Remus, of course). Remus had brought a few back once — with the devastating report that you could only get the waffle maker to make two at a time before it "needed time to cool off" — thinking that just giving Sirius one would be enough to cool him off, but, in reality, it had had the complete opposite effect.

And, hell, even on James it had been something of a mistake (if not a well-intended one, which, if James is honest, is his favourite kind of mistake).

Because that waffle — and he knows he sounds ridiculous, but _that waffle._

God damn if it wasn't the best thing James had ever had in his life.

Remus' kind gesture had really only ended up in throwing more fuel onto the fire and so, now, any time Sirius is even remotely high, they end up talking about the waffles and the whipped butter and the syrup that is definitely just corn syrup but still somehow tastes like a fucking tree in the best way, and, if Sirius is really high (and, alright, if James and Remus are also appropriately stoned), they end up lamenting the fact that their tuition and fees and room and board and all that go to paying for their chronic disappointment.

They're paying eighty thousand a year for a waffle maker that barely works.

Or, you know, they're technically paying for other things, but the waffles are the only things that actually matter.

James is pretty sure that gently racist political science professors are, like, at least a dime a dozen, so he can't imagine his teaching faculty are really costing the university that much.

'We should do something about this,' Sirius says now. They'd been silent for a few minutes and so James, even sober, takes a few minutes to remember what they were talking about.

'The waffles?'

'Yeah.' Sirius sits up straighter and his head almost against Remus' knee. 'We've suffered under the tyranny of USC dining for too long.'

James laughs. 'Okay, Mark Antony.'

Sirius raises an eyebrow at him. Even stoned out of his mind, the expression is so aggressively Beverly Hills that James almost can't bear it. 'What's Marc Anthony have to do with waffles?'

Remus snorts and sprays a bit of beer out of his nose.

'Look, fuck you guys,' Sirius says. He pushes himself to his feet before he drops down onto the futon next to Remus. 'I'm serious, we need to do something about this fucking waffle situation.'

'It's not life or death,' Remus says. He's still mopping beer off his face and it hampers the "I'm the one holding the functioning brain cell" air that he usually goes for.

'Tell that to my hypothalamus,' Sirius mutters, and Remus just shoots him a look.

'What the fuck are you talking about?'

'The waffles!' Sirius drops a hand onto Remus' thigh. 'I'm fucking serious, we need to, like, scope that thing out. Start making all the waffles and hoarding them.'

James and Remus both laugh this time and Sirius has the audacity to look offended.

'What, are we just going to stand next to the waffle maker all day?' Remus says. 'Watch it for signs of life and then swoop in and make a waffle as soon as it's functional?'

'We'd need a freezer to keep them in,' James says. He looks around their room, half jokingly looking for a place where they'd put it, half (and he keeps this half to himself) thinking honestly about where it would go. 'And we'd need a toaster. Trev wouldn't be happy if he found out we have a toaster.'

'Fuck Trev,' Sirius says, waving a dismissive hand. 'You give me a noise violation, I'm getting a toaster.'

'To be fair,' Remus says, 'you _were_ screaming along with The Clash at, like, two in the morning.'

'There's no better time to listen to The Clash,' Sirius says, plowing on with the air of someone who absolutely refuses to be distracted, 'but anyway, I swear, I fucking mean it. Can you imagine? We'd have all the waffles in the place. No one else, just us, _waffles for days_.'

James is biting his lip now. It sounds like a great idea — not the keeping the waffles from everyone else thing, but the having waffles for themselves to finally enjoy — but he still has to rib Sirius a little bit.

'So you want to become the Jeff Bezos of waffles?'

Sirius grabs a stray sock from the ground and hurls it at James' head. 'Fuck you.'

'We literally can't stand in Village all day,' Remus says. Beer successfully mopped out of his stubble, he's apparently in full possession of the brain cell again. 'We've got class.'

Sirius laughs. 'You know I don't care about skipping class.'

Remus shoots him a stern look. 'You're not skipping class.'

Sirius rolls his eyes, but, still, folds surprisingly easily. 'We could do shifts, then. Or, or,' he sits up so fast he nearly falls off the edge of the futon onto the floor. 'We can do shifts and start gathering data — over time, we'll be able to track patterns of usability and then know, without having to be there, when the waffle maker is most likely to be fucking working.'

Remus shakes his head and takes another swig of his beer. 'This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.'

But something about the promise of data has James convinced. 'Let's do it.'

James should probably be embarrassed by how seriously they take this whole thing, but, honestly, he's actually a little proud. It shows their level of dedication, and, if Sirius is to be believed, how "utterly genius" they are for thinking of a "whole ass strategy", even if said strategy was a half-baked plan cooked up when Sirius was, well, fully baked.

And it lets James practise the Excel skills his high school had made a point to drill into his skull. So, thanks, Binns, guess your class wasn't completely useless after all. Though Binns definitely still sucks, no matter how great James now is with pivot tables.

The plan is simple enough — it's just _go to Village in shifts every day and record whether the machine is working or not and whether anyone is using it or not into said spreadsheet._ Remus had suggested, at first, that they not try to cover every hour of every day (poor guy just didn't want anyone to miss anymore classes), but Sirius had been insistent.

'People have different patterns of behaviour depending on the day, Lupin, we need every hour of every day!'

He would have put a bloody security camera up in Village if he thought he could get away with it, though whenever James mentions this, Sirius just frowns, gets sulky, and mumbles 'it was just a Ring, not some flagrant symbol of oppression or whatever Remus was on about'.

So, you know, even with the simplest of plans, they're still finding ways to fuck about.

It takes them a few weeks to manage to get every slot on the timetable — between classes (at least, classes for James and Remus and Sirius when he's convinced it's worth him time), James' club lacrosse, and Remus'... well, the many extracurricular meetings that Remus goes to, they're only able to hit about a third of the 84 time slots their first go round.

'At this rate, we won't be done til Christmas,' Sirius says, gesturing wildly with his boba and James watches the tapioca pearls swirl around in the bottom.

'We'll be done in two weeks at this rate,' James says. 'That's not that long.'

'Still,' Sirius takes another sip of his tea. 'I want waffles, so we need to hurry this thing along.'

James snorts. 'Right, sorry, sir. Remus and I will hurry it up for you.'

Sirius gives him the finger.

Sass aside, they do make more of an effort over the next two weeks (because, no matter how determined they are, it still takes two weeks). James is late to a few of his classes, Sirius skips a few of his completely, and Remus — though he isn't happy about it — agrees to miss Speech and Debate _and_ some lecture the Cinema school is doing that he'd been excited about.

'They'll record it,' he says, though he's definitely grumbling a little bit. And Sirius, god, for the first time ever, almost starts to feel guilty.

'You don't have to miss it, I'll just skip Mechanics!'

Remus shoots him a look. 'You're not skipping Mechanics. You've barely gone to that class this semester.'

'I've got an A,' Sirius says, rolling his eyes. All anxiety is gone from his voice now and he's back to his smooth, devil may care attitude. 'What's Merrythought going to teach me that I haven't already taught myself?'

'Probably a lot, seeing as he has a PhD in the subject,' Remus says. 'You're going to class. I'm going to the stupid Village.'

'I owe you,' Sirius says. There's something different in his voice now, something James had only heard a few times before and now he wants to melt through the wall. 'Dinner or something.'

Remus' cheeks colour, the slightest tinge of pink on the apples of his cheeks, and James bites back a smile as he turns back to his computer.

Flush and all, Remus still manages to sound entirely normal when he speaks. 'Only if you take me to Tracey's.'

James is willing to stake his life on the fact that Sirius is smiling from ear to ear when he says, 'Done.'

The one area they squabble over is who is going to cover the early morning weekend shifts. The seven to ten AM slot that, honestly, the three of them would rather just forget exists. In the end, it's James who agrees to cover them, though, really, he isn't sure that he knows how or why it ended up this way. What he does know — and he knows it for absolute fucking certain — is that he's about three seconds away from dying when he drags himself up out of bed at half six so that he can get to the dining hall in time for them to open that Saturday.

There's a lot of muttering as he walks across campus, but it's early and so no one hears him and James thinks it's like a tree falling in the forest, it doesn't count if no one's around to hear it.

He'd thought that he'd have plenty of time to get to Village before it opened, but that dining hall is already open when James arrives a few minutes after seven and drags himself, still barely conscious, through the door. He's convinced himself that it's going to be fine, though — that, surely, no one else is going to be as utterly insane as he is to be up at this hour — but then he makes his way through the turnstiles and sees that there is, unbelievably, already someone standing at the waffle maker.

'Fuck.' He mutters it as softly as he can manage under his breath, but he still gets a disapproving look from one of the women working there.

He walks as casually as possible over towards the waffle maker and pulls his phone out of his pocket, making a note that there is, indeed, someone else as crazy about these waffles as they are.

Someone else who honestly also looks totally and completely pretty, but James absolutely, _absolutely,_ is not focusing on that.

Nope.

Sure, he notices that she's tall and, alright, he _maybe_ sees that she's got legs that stretch on for, like, forever, and her red hair looks so soft and the way that it's curling, just a little bit at the ends, and brushing up against her bare shoulders, you know, _maybe_ he sees that, but he's definitely, not, like, _focusing_ on it.

He _might_ , though, be standing a little too close, because all of a sudden, the girl at the waffle maker whips around and glares at him — she's glaring _daggers_ at him — but James is still temporarily stunned by the memory of her dark red hair flying over her shoulder as she moved.

'What the fuck are you doing?'

What comes out of his mouth is barely English because, okay, _fine_ , he's too busy thinking about the fact that her shoulders are covered in freckles.

'Uh… what?'

'What the fuck are you doing?' She repeats it slowly, her eyes widening as she looks at him. They're dark green, like the fucking forest, and James is honestly losing his mind. She is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen and he's in the middle of looking like a waffle-based stalker. 'Why are you just loitering behind me?'

'I'm —' James' hand jumps up to his hair and he brushes it nervously back off his forehead. 'I'm not loitering.'

He is definitely loitering.

'You were. Are you going to try and make a waffle after me?'

'No —'

She gives her hand a little twirl and points her finger off towards the front of the dining hall. 'Then fucking leave.'

He wants to. He wants to pack himself up right now and just walk on out of here because there is something about this woman's tone that tells James she is absolutely not one to be trifled with.

But he also can't…. Look, he can't muster up the self-preservation instincts.

'I can't,' he says. He tries to say it casually, coolly, like he's running an international sting operation instead of staking out the waffle maker for the next three hours.

She raises an eyebrow at him. It's very clear that she's thinking about smashing James' head between the waffle iron plates the minute she safely extracts her waffle in a few minutes, but there's also a slight challenge there that James finds intriguing. Like she wants to see just how far he'll push his luck.

(Answer: he'll push his luck right over a cliff, but he hopes it doesn't come to that)

'And why can't you leave, exactly?'

He rapidly runs through the options in his head — is he meeting a friend? Scoping out the place so he can get a job slinging syrup? Doing a project for class? — but he finally decides (mostly because he wants to see her reaction), to go with the truth.

He does his best Danny Ocean. 'I'm staking out the waffle maker.'

Whatever she's expecting, it clearly isn't that. She looks completely taken aback, and James smiles at her expression.

'Not expecting that, eh?'

Idiot.

She snorts and rolls her eyes and, god, even hating on him, she's completely gorgeous. 'Not expecting that level of idiocy, you mean?'

'It's actually a very solid plan,' he says. 'This waffle maker is shit, so I'd have to stake it out to know when I could ever reasonably expect to get a waffle.'

She just looks at him, eyebrow cocked, disbelieving look on her face. He can't decide if she doesn't believe him or (and he thinks this is probably the most likely) if she doesn't believe that she's living through this moment.

'I know,' he says, anxiously filling her silence with more undeserved bravado. 'It's the most brilliant plan you've ever heard.'

That just makes her laugh again. 'Are you sure you understand what "brilliant" means?'

'Pretty sure,' he says. The waffle maker dings and his sparring partner opts not to reply. She just rolls her eyes again — and fucking hell, James cannot _breathe_ — and turns around to retrieve her waffle.

She flips the waffle maker over with one smooth motion of her wrist and, like a real waffle rebel, plucks the waffle out of the iron with her fingers and drops it onto her plate.

'Damn,' James says. 'Bold of you, not using a fork.'

She pumps a measure of syrup onto her plate and turns around, an amused (and heart-stoppingly beautiful) smile on her face.

'Damn right.'

James doesn't watch her walk away, but he's not… _not_ looking when she glances back over her shoulder at him.

'Fucking hell,' he says, exhaling when she finally finishes swiping her card and disappears into the dining hall. His heart is pounding, properly palpitating, and he's got that itchy feeling in his body like he needs to move. Run after her, say hi, say _something,_ get her name.

Instead he takes a deep breath and shakes out his shoulders. He woke up at the crack of fucking dawn, ran across the whole of this stupid campus. He can't just go running around, listening to his sappy little heart.

He steps forward and fills one of the little batter cups with waffle batter. It's probably a little too full, but, to be honest, a little bit of waffle overflow never hurt anyone — in fact, the crispy bits on the edges are the best bits. He moves to flip open the waffle maker and very nearly starts drizzling in the batter (and he's got plans to do it _very_ indulgently) when he realises that the red indicator light — you know, the light that says _it's working_ — is off.

James sets the batter back down onto the counter and fishes his phone out of his pocket. 'Fuck.'

James would be embarrassed to admit how excited he is to wake up the next morning to round off his weekend observations, but, luckily, Sirius is still asleep when he leaves, so he doesn't have to admit anything. The red-haired woman who completely dunked on him (and maybe sent James into a weird, heartsick little spiral for the last twenty-four hours), though, isn't there, and James spends the rest of the morning fighting disappointment.

His Sunday rotation complete, they've finally got the full schedule mapped out.

'We could do another week's worth of observations,' Remus says. He's laying on their futon again, beer in hand, and sounding surprisingly wary about moving forward without said observations for someone who thought this was stupid in the first place.

Sirius, also laying on the futon, though with his head in Remus' lap, just laughs. 'I'm sure it's probably fine.'

Remus shoots him a look. 'Haven't they taught you about proper study design in the physics department?'

Sirius laughs again like what he's about to say is the most obvious thing in the world. 'Yeah. But it's not like I'm determining relative phase shift variations, I'm literally just trying to get waffles.'

'I'm just saying you can't base a whole plan around waffle access after one set of observations,' Remus says. He must know it isn't going to make a bit of difference, but he never can help himself. 'The waffle maker could work normally in times that it just happened to be broken while we were there and vice versa.'

'Oh well.' Sirius turns his head on Remus' lap. 'James, do you have the chart yet?'

This was what he got for being the Excel wizard.

'Yes, sir,' James says, rolling his eyes and spinning around in his desk chair so he's properly facing them. He's got his laptop on his lap, but he AirPlays it to the television opposite the futon so that they can see it more easily.

'The opening hour is consistently reliable for at least one waffle, though the weekday mornings here,' he points to Monday with his cursor, 'and here,' he points to Friday, 'are reliable for two.'

Sirius groans. 'I'm not fucking waking up at six thirty.'

'This is _literally_ your idea,' Remus says, shooting him a look. 'You're getting up whenever you have to get up if you want your damn waffles.'

'Flirt on your own time,' James says, 'I've got a paper to finish.'

Remus goes a little pink in the cheeks but, as usual, Sirius looks profoundly unaffected. James can tell, though, that he's tickled that James recognises the very obvious flirting, though, because he sits up and flicks his hair back over his shoulder, the gesture too-casual in the way Sirius' gestures always are when he's trying to be secretly pleased about something.

'Yes, sir,' Sirius says, imitating James' earlier tone. 'Please finish walking us through your colour-coded spreadsheet.'

There aren't many times, truth be told, where the stupid waffle maker is actually functional. Beyond the mornings blocks — where James assumes it's functional only because so few people are crazy enough to be up that early — there are post-lunch and dinner blocks where they seem to be in the clear.

'Great.' Sirius claps his hands together the minute James stops sharing his screen. 'James, can you hand me my laptop?'

James grabs Sirius' laptop off the desk and leans, so far he's nearly dropping out of his own seat, so he can hand it over to him. Remus raises an eyebrow.

'What are you doing?'

'Getting a freezer on Amazon,' Sirius says.

'I thought you weren't using Amazon anymore?'

Sirius waves his hand. 'There's no ethical consumption under capitalism, Lupin. And I need a freezer and I need it tomorrow.'

Remus snorts. 'I don't think that means to just give up and use Amazon, but okay.'

'Also there aren't any freezers on Prime,' James says, 'I already checked.'

Sirius swears and slams his laptop closed.

They do, after a bit of complaining (Sirius) and a fair bit of muscle strain (James and Remus) manage to buy a freezer and a toaster and smuggle them into their dorm. The freezer is a _little_ bigger than they would have liked - they only had a seven cubic feet one at Best Buy when they went and so they'd ended up having to flip James' bed and put it on risers and - well, whatever, it was a to do, but they managed to get the damn thing into their room and they managed to do it without Trev seeing them and that's what counted.

Waffle schedule finalised (and shared, adorably, in a bookable GCal so they could sign up for slots), they were finally ready (most of them, Sirius is still very much coming to terms with the fact that he's going to have to get up early two days a week) to start cashing in on the only good part of all this absurdity. The first morning, James is standing practically pressed up against the window outside the Village waiting for the staff to come unlock the door.

It's proof that he's the better friend, the fact that he's taken the first shift, but it also means that he gets to claim the first freshly prepared waffle for himself, so he gets to enjoy the spoils of their long and ridiculous work before anyone else.

And if it happens to be a Saturday and that's the last day he saw the girl with the red hair, well, that's just a coincidence.

He's starting to get a little nervous, though, as he's standing there because she was there, like, the moment it opened that one Saturday and Village is a few minutes away from opening right now and she isn't anywhere in sight. He's just starting to convince himself that it was a one off, her Saturday appearance, when he sees her walking up Jefferson.

She's got her hair slicked back into a high ponytail this morning and she's in workout shorts and she's wearing a USC sweatshirt that's she's cut so that it hangs off one shoulder and fucking hell, when she looks up and sees him standing there, bouncing on the balls of his feet like an absolute psychopath, she smiles, actually smiles.

'Going to loiter behind me while I make a waffle again?' she says, her smile widening a little as she approaches.

James laughs, but it also sounds like he's choking. 'Not planning on it, no.'

What he is planning on - a dead sprint to the waffle maker the minute they open the door - is probably equally, if not more, insane than lingering behind her, so he opts not to share.

She'll find out soon enough anyway.

And, christ, that realisation hits him like a brick - she's never going to think he's hot if he's always doing incredibly weird shit around her.

'Do you just get up early on Saturday for the fun then?' she asks.

'Oh, yeah,' James says. 'There's nothing I love more in the world.'

She laughs. 'I can tell.'

He's about to say something else - god knows what, he's got nothing in his brain - when he hears the lock on the door behind him. The girl has already opened the door and is holding the door open for him before James finally drops back into his body and it's two seconds after when he remembers what he's going to have to do.

He follows her through the doors more or less normally, but the minute they're in the dining hall, James breaks into what is very clearly a run that he's trying very, very hard to make look like a walk so he doesn't get shouted at by the dining hall staff. He pushes through the turnstile so quickly that it almost doesn't turn fast enough and he very nearly goes over the thing, and he doesn't have to keep running once he's through - because he's very, very far ahead of everyone else in this fucking dining hall - but apparently he's not going to be content this morning until he makes himself look as insane as possible.

He's making his waffle - like batter in the iron - when the girl finally catches up with him. And she… does not look happy.

'Did you just fucking _run ahead of me_ to get to the waffle maker?'

James laughs — a mistake — and runs a hand through his hair. 'Maybe.'

She cocks her eyebrow at him and — fucking hell — drops her hands onto her hips. 'Why is that funny?'

He swallows. 'It's certainly a weird thing to do. Fun story for your friends.'

'"Some asshole ran through Village, nearly took out the turnstile, and almost skid into the salad bar because he wanted to make a waffle before me"?'

'I'm called James,' he says. 'Not some asshole.'

'Oh, sorry - _James_ ran through the Village, nearly took out the turnstile, and almost skid into the salad bar because he wanted to make a waffle before me.'

'Well when you say it like that -'

'It sounds fucking insane?' she says. 'Yeah. It does.'

James is in love. In that moment, her expression irritated, her tone like a shard of glass she's literally ready to stab him in the eye with, he is totally and completely in love.

'I was really hungry,' James says. 'In my defence.'

She shakes her head at him. There's something a little knowing in her eyes, but James doesn't clock it until it's too late.

'No, this is connected to you staking out the waffle maker last time,' she says.

James immediately shakes his head, and says, 'What, no, why would that be true?' but, apparently, he's not nearly as convincing as he believes.

'What weird thing are you doing?'

'Nothing -'

' _James_.'

Fucking hell. His _heart_ -

'Just making a waffle,' he says. He's determined to stay strong this time. 'What's your name, by the way?' He tacks it on very casually and she holds his gaze for a moment, like she's trying to break him (she very nearly does), before she rolls her eyes.

'Lily.'

'Well, Lily,' James smiles at her, a bright golden thing, before he turns around to collect his waffle from the iron. 'I expect I'll see you around here quite a bit from now on.'

She watches him collect his waffle and, once he's backed away from the table, she moves to stand in front of it so she's clear to make her own. 'I'm thrilled.'

Her incredibly sexy sarcasm aside, she does actually seem a _little_ excited to see him every Saturday morning for the next few weeks (especially once he stops running ahead of her into the dining hall like a psychopath). He still hasn't told her what he's doing, despite her occasional needling of him, but he thinks at this point it's less because he doesn't want her to know and more because he just wants her to continue asking him about it.

'I know you're up to something weird,' she says. It's a few weeks later and she's leaning up against the table beside him while his waffle cooks, her own cooling on the plate in her hand. 'Whether you tell me or not, I know you and I know that you can't possibly be here for any normal reason.'

'Oh,' he smiles at her, a big, stupid grin. 'You _know me,_ huh?'

She nudges him with her knee. 'I know you're an idiot.'

And as much as he wants to, he can't even fight her on that one.

Because, really, she has gotten to know him a little bit, in the two minute bursts it takes to cook their waffles all the way through. He's found out she's in Annenberg - because of course she is - and she's from _St. Louis_ , which makes James laugh until she threatens to pour syrup on him for making fun of her hometown.

He hasn't gotten a lot of detail - neither has she, to be fair - and they haven't exchanged numbers, but she finds him on Instagram and sends him this post about Aries that is honestly so rude but also painfully, painfully accurate, and, from there, their DMs are full of either pictures of waffles, astrology memes, and posts from those damn meme accounts that you have to follow and James thought he was following them all, but he was _not_ because like every single one Lily sends him is from a different account.

He feels like he should just get the courage together to ask her out - like ask her out properly - especially because they've been DMing back and forth and, now, she sometimes _happens_ to make her way over to Village on Wednesday mornings, too, when James is getting his morning waffles before he has to go to Comparative Politics. She still hasn't the slightest idea what he's doing - she still asks why he never gets syrup, why he just always puts the waffles straight into a takeaway container and leaves Village as soon as he's gotten them rather than eating like a normal person - but it's so fun hearing her try to figure out what he's up to that he's honestly not sure he'll ever tell her.

Still, phase two - what was supposed to be the final phase of the plan - only lasts for about two months before it becomes clear that they still aren't getting the kind of waffle-based turnout they were hoping for.

'We did all this work,' Sirius says, as he cracks one of the frozen waffles in half and puts it in their illegal toaster. 'And we've only ever got, like, three in there at a time.'

'The thing works twice a day and we're eating them constantly,' James says. He's got his own waffle and he's sitting on his bed, his legs dangling over the side. 'Though, really, I bet it works more often, but Remus is right and we just didn't see it the days we were there.'

'We're not doing more observations again, that was exhausting,' Sirius says.

James laughs. 'At least you didn't have to get up early to do yours.'

'Yeah, okay, but, still, like, getting up at all and just standing around in Village all day is fucking boring.'

'Yeah,' James says, but he's not quite meaning it now as his mind floats back to his conversations with Lily. 'Pretty boring.'

'Ugh.' Sirius' waffle pops up and he glances over his shoulder at James as he plucks it from the toaster. 'What straight thing are you thinking about right now?'

'What?' James pulls a face and breaths a disbelieving laugh. 'What are you talking about?'

Yes, folks, you will find James F. Potter on the stage at Massman quite soon.

Sirius just drops his waffle down onto his plate and turns around to look at James. He studies him for a moment before a small smile grows on his lips and he shakes his head a little.

'You met a girl.'

'No, I didn't.' James says it immediately, exactly the way you do when someone has said something entirely correct.

'You did.' Sirius is laughing now, but it's not derisive, not shady. He's genuinely happy for James, James can tell, but, really, there's nothing to be happy _about_.

'I just bumped into this girl that first Saturday when I was doing the schedule,' James says. There's no point continuing to hide it, but maybe he shouldn't've admitted that this has been weeks in the making.

'You bumped into her in _October_?! What the fuck, why didn't you tell me?'

'We were busy?' James spears a square of his waffle and puts it into his mouth. 'It wasn't anything? I didn't even know her name then.'

'I knew you were looking off,' Sirius says, pointing his own fork at him. 'I should have known. It was the same look you got when Cara moved to SD in tenth grade.'

'I -' James eats another bite of waffle. He knows exactly what Sirius is talking about and he hates it. 'I don't have a _look_.'

'Yes you do. But anyway, shut up, have you seen her since?'

'Yeah.' James thinks back to her threatening him after he ran ahead of her a few weeks back, thinks about all the times he's seen her since. 'It's never been anything that serious, though. I just got her name, like, the other week.'

'God, you're sad,' Sirius says, laughing.

James groans and drops his head back against the wall. 'I know.'

His brain just short circuits whenever she's around, falls out of his skull and then he can't figure out how to put two words together. Sirius laughs, but it's at least a little sympathetic, when he tells him this.

'I can't decide if she hates me or what,' James says. He's got one more piece of waffle left and he's dragging it through the last bits of syrup on his plate, determined to mop the plate clean. 'I think every conversation we've had is her lowkey threatening to kill me.'

Sirius laughs again, louder this time. 'Fuck, I bet you're in deep then.'

James tries to scoff through the waffle in his mouth, but doesn't quite manage it. 'What are you talking about?'

Sirius just shakes his head in this way that's equal parts amused and condescending. 'You love getting dunked on, dude.'

'I -' He's intending to deny it, but the look Sirius shoots him is not to be trifled with. 'Okay, fine, but, look, in my defence, a powerful woman is hot as hell.'

'Don't need to defend yourself to me,' Sirius says, holding up his hands. A string of syrup drips off his fork onto his leg and he swears before trying to wipe it off with his thumb.

Sirius shifts his focus to his waffle and James, deciding that they're finished with this conversation, goes to wash his dish in the communal sink out in the hall. When he returns, hands now smelling like the weird green apple soap they put in the dispensers, Sirius has got Ina Garten on the television and he's lying stretched out over the futon. He turns his head when James walks past and starts putting his dishes away.

'I had an idea while you were gone.'

'Oh fucking hell,' James laughs and rubs his wet palms against his sleep shirt to dry them before he starts rummaging through his dresser for something to wear for the day. 'I'm not staking out any more appliances.'

'No.' Sirius pauses Ina and sits up, and that's how James knows he's completely serious. 'About you and this girl you're in love with.'

'I'm not _in love_ with Lily,' James barely manages it because, honestly, he's too busy choking his heart back out of his throat at the thought.

Sirius, apparently, knows it.

'Whatever.' He waves his hand. 'But I have an idea and you're going to love it.'

James grabs a pair of black jeans out of the bottom drawer of his dresser and throws them onto his bed. 'Am I?'

'Yes.' Sirius sounds utterly thrilled with himself and James can't decide if this is a good thing or a completely horrible thing. Probably a mixture of both.

'Alright then.' He pulls his sleep shirt up over his head and tosses it into the laundry before yanking open his middle dresser drawer and thumbing through his t-shirts. He could probably get away with wearing a sweatshirt today - the high was only going to be, like, sixty-five - but he opts for his club lacrosse t-shirt instead. He can always throw his denim jacket on top if it's, like, actually cold when he gets outside.

He's so busy thinking about what he's going to wear that it takes him a minute to hear Sirius' apparently brilliant plan.

'We should do a heist.'

'I'm sorry.' James turns around, t-shirt in hand, and stares at him. 'A _heist_?'

'Yeah.' Sirius nods, the gesture far too casual for someone who's just proposed what sounds like the LA version of Millennium Dome. 'Nothing brings people together like a heist. It's why Hollywood keeps making heist movies.'

'I think it's also got something to do with some weird masculine fantasy,' James says, and Sirius says it before James can even think it.

'Okay, Remus.'

James tugs the t-shirt over his head. 'What exactly are you thinking we're going to heist? It's not like USC has a rare diamond somewhere we don't know about.'

'They might, actually,' Sirius says. He stabs the last few bites of waffle on his plate and shoves them into his mouth before setting the plate on the small side table. 'But we're going to steal the waffle maker. Obviously.'

'Right,' James says, grabbing his jeans off the bed and stepping into them. 'Obviously.'

Sirius frowns. 'You sound like you don't agree.'

'I just honestly have no idea how you came up with _heist_ as the solution for my non-existent romance problems.'

Sirius barks a laugh. 'First of all, your romance problems are very real, look at your face.' He points at him but, when James glances at himself in the mirror on the opposite wall, he doesn't see what Sirius is talking about. He looks normal?

'Second of all, like I said, nothing brings people together like a heist. You've got to really trust each other -'

'To steal a waffle maker?' James can't keep the disbelief out of his voice.

'Yes.'

James laughs. 'Are you high?'

'Not yet.'

They stare at one another for a beat, two, but Sirius looks entirely earnest and, fucking hell, James can't believe he's even -

James takes a deep breath. 'How would we even steal it?'

They decide, thankfully, to let things more or less continue as normal in the lead up to finals and to heist (which is now, according to Sirius, a verb) in the first week they're back in January.

'They won't know to expect anything that early,' Sirius says. Remus has gone back to North Carolina for the holiday, so they're on FaceTime, and James and Sirius are a… little bit high. James and Sirius are laying in James' bed at his parents house and Sirius has a whiteboard clutched in his hand with some half-formed plans written on and what looks like a map of the Village, though it's been very, very hastily drawn and is probably not even remotely accurate.

'You don't think they'll be ready for nonsense the minute we get back?' Remus asks. He's whispering down the phone because his parents are sleeping in the room next to his and, apparently, they aren't the sort who would approve of his two stoned California friends calling him to talk about a waffle maker heist in the middle of the night.

'Look,' Sirius pushes himself up so that he's sitting, his elbow dead in the centre of James' chest as leverage and the phone in his hand so that, not only is James now _in pain,_ he also can't see Remus anymore.

'Ouch, fucker,' James smacks Sirius' side with the back of his hand and grabs for Sirius' phone arm. 'Remus, your boyfriend hurt me.'

James can just see Remus press his fingers into his forehead. 'Oh my god.'

'We have to do this right when we get back,' Sirius says, completely ignoring James and his _pain_ , 'because Jimbo here is in love and he'll lose her if we don't intervene.'

'I'm not in _love_!' James says at the exact same time as Remus says, 'Ohhh, James, who is she?'

'Some girl from St Louis,' Sirius says. 'Rose, I think?'

'Lily,' James says, smacking Sirius' arm again. This time, Sirius loses his grip on the phone and Remus goes flying.

'How do you know she's from St Louis?' Remus says. James can't see Remus (he's buried in the duvet, lost forever), but still, he turns to Sirius.

'Yeah, how the fuck do you know that?'

'You followed her a few weeks ago on Instagram,' Sirius says, rolling his eyes. 'I just looked up her account to make sure she was good enough for you.'

'St Louis is a nice city,' Remus says. Sirius has found him and fallen back down onto the pillow, so James can actually see him again. 'Worse barbeque, but -'

'Please stop talking about barbeque,' James says. 'I'm _still_ on beef TikTok because of you assholes.'

Sirius leans over James and shouts directly into his locked phone, 'Beef, barbeque, brisket!' before James finally manages to push him off.

'But so we're doing it,' Sirius says, his hair still over his eyes as he attempts to sort himself out, 'because James needs to tell Lily he's in love with her and there's no better way than a heist.'

Remus makes that face he always makes when he's trying not to laugh outright. 'I don't really see the logic here.'

Sirius grabs the whiteboard and jabs at it aggressively with his finger. 'This, Lupin, this is the logic!'

It's still a little chilly when Sirius and James are headed back up to LA for spring term at the beginning of January, but it's warmer, if only by a few degrees, than it was down by the ocean in SD. Still, James is bundled up as he makes his way over to Village on the first Wednesday morning of the semester - he's got a beanie on, a denim jacket _overtop_ his USC hoodie, and he's even wearing the boots his dad got him a few years ago that he'd wanted desperately but only gets to wear, like, three times a year because it's never cold enough otherwise.

He knows he'll be sweating by eleven, but, for now, he's quite confident in this look he's got going on.

Sirius had said (last night when he'd helped James pick it out) that it was the perfect "convincing the girl you're in love with to go heisting with you" outfit.

And while James maintains that _he is not in love_ , he also hopes that Sirius is right.

Lily arrives at Village a few minutes after James does and she looks significantly less bundled up than he is. She's in workout leggings, an old St Louis Rams sweatshirt, and her hair is up in that high, swinging ponytail again. She still had a thin sheen of sweat across her forehead and, almost as though she feels James noticing, she swipes her sleeve across her forehead.

'Sorry,' she says, laughing and pulling open the door so they can walk inside. 'I went on a long run this morning so I'm still a little sweaty.'

'No,' James shakes his head and tries to stop himself watching the way her ponytail swings as she walks. 'Don't apologise, sweating is - I mean, you'd die if you didn't, so.'

She laughs and, though she looks a little confused, she doesn't push him on it.

'Did you have a good break?' James asks, falling into step beside her once they're through the turnstiles.

'Yeah.' Lily smiles at him, that big, beautiful smile he loves. 'St Louis was _freezing_ and it was amazing.'

'It was pretty cold here, too,' James says, and that just makes her laugh again.

'It was literally twenty-five back home. This is nothing.'

James shivers just thinking about it. 'But weather aside, good holiday?'

'Yeah.' She shrugs this time and her expression shifts a little. James doesn't know what, exactly, wasn't right about her trip home, but luckily, she doesn't leave him guessing. 'My sister and her husband were there and, honestly, I kind of hate them, so that sucked, but.' She shrugs again. 'I'm back now. And I won't see them until, like, May, probably, so I'm not worrying about it.'

'I'm sorry they made your holiday shitty,' James says. He's never had the issue himself - though his great uncle left a lot to be desired at Thanksgiving, they haven't seen him in ten years - he's seen first hand, from Sirius, just how awful your family could make your life if they were intent on it.

'It's fine,' Lily says, waving her hand. 'It's not like I'm not used to it.'

James waits, but she doesn't elaborate. Instead she grabs a cup, fills it with batter, and, when she's turned away from him says, 'Anyway, how was your holiday?'

'Good,' James says. 'Sirius and I just rolled around on the beach for most of it.'

'God,' Lily laughs and shakes her head at him as she dumps her batter into the waffle maker and flips it over to start it cooking. 'How is that December here?'

James shrugs. 'It's why it's the best state there is.'

That just makes her laugh again.

He's so close to just telling her now - to mentioning that, hey, speaking of Sirius, we have a little proposition for you - but he hasn't got the slightest idea how to bring it up. How do you propose a heist - a waffle maker heist - to someone you barely know, but would like to know, and how do you explain that this heist is really just the culmination of all the stupid waffle related things she's seen him do for the last few months?

Luckily, Lily says, 'Did you do anything else besides go to the beach?' and then James just has to blurt it out.

'Well, we actually came up with a little plan and I wanted to see if you wanted to join us.'

Also luckily, he doesn't announce the heist in the middle of the dining hall.

'A plan, huh?' Lily flips the waffle maker over and pulls her waffle out before stepping to the side so James can make his waffle (or _waffles_ if the machine feels like being cooperative this morning).

'We probably shouldn't talk about it here,' James says. He's very aware of the few people around them now and, while he doesn't think anyone is listening to them, he also doesn't want to take the chance.

Not that he thinks he'd necessarily believe anyone talking about a waffle maker heist if he overheard them talking about it, but, still, you can never be too careful.

Luckily - he's really hit the luck trifecta this morning - Lily seems intrigued rather than completely freaked out.

'Okay. Let's walk out together, then, so you can tell me.'

James manages to get two waffles out of the machine this morning (what's a hat trick but four?) and while he tucks his waffles away into their takeout container, Lily's got hers in her hands and she's tearing pieces off of it as they walk through the Village towards W 32nd.

'So what's this plan you've come up with then?'

'Well,' James shifts the waffles around in his hands a little. 'It's a little weird.'

She laughs, a bright, shout of a laugh that shoots through him. 'Of course it is.'

'We — so you know we've got this thing with the waffles at the Village.' He holds up the takeaway container in his hand as though Lily might have forgotten.

She nods. 'I do.'

'Well, we decided that, you know, it was time to stop having to come all the way over here so that we could get our USC waffles.' He says it casually, or as casually as he can muster anyway, and then lets it sit in the space between them for a few beats.

Something like understanding passes across Lily's face, but, still, she just says, 'Uh-huh,' and forces James to actually say it.

'So we thought, you know, what if we just… took the machine?'

'Took the machine.'

He nods. 'Took the machine.'

They walk for a few feet in complete silence (well, besides the sound of the traffic) before Lily looks up at him. 'You know that's completely stupid?'

'Yeah.' No point arguing. 'But we think it could be fun. And, really, Sirius made a good point - we're paying a lot of money to go here, they probably owe us the waffle maker.'

Lily sucks in a breath through her teeth. 'He's not wrong.'

They fall quiet for a few moments, thinking about how much money they're going to owe the Department of Education in a few years when they're finished with their education.

'So, what exactly are you asking me to do?' Lily asks. She hasn't said no yet - he has no idea how - and that strikes him as a sign that she might actually be willing to participate in this stupid thing.

'Well, we figured we'd invite you along,' James says. He hopes it sounds exclusive, cool.

'Oh, _invite_ me to steal a waffle maker from my university.' She tears off another piece of waffle and tosses it into her mouth. 'Tempting.'

'Think of how many waffles you could have,' James says. 'You wouldn't have to walk to the Village anymore.'

'No, but I'd have to walk over to yours, I'm sure. I bet you're keeping it.'

'Yeah, but then you'd get to see me.'

Lily laughs again and tears off another bite. 'Is that supposed to be an incentive?'

'Please,' he's smiling at her, 'you know you love seeing me.'

'It's really just the waffles,' Lily says, 'but I guess you aren't _awful_.'

'Flattery like that, I'll get an ego.'

Lily snorts. 'Like you haven't already got one.'

James is trying to be offended, but he laughs before he can catch himself. 'Are you going to heist with us or not?'

'Oh, this is a _heist_?'

'Like _Goodfellas_ ,' James says.

'More like _Muppets: Most Wanted_.'

James can't help himself - he cracks up laughing. 'Do you want in or not, Evans?' he says, desperately trying to get a handle on himself. 'This is a once in a lifetime offer.'

She stares at him, her eyes shining with mirth, and even though he can tell that she thinks this all is deeply hilarious, he isn't sure which way she's going to go. It's a ridiculous ask - he knows it - but he's actually really hoping that she says yes to this because he thinks that doing something ridiculous together might honestly be just the thing they need.

Lily, apparently, agrees.

'Yeah, alright,' she says, and she tosses her last bite of waffle into her mouth.

James was under the impression that this heist was supposed to be the four of them but, when it comes down to it, Sirius informs him that, actually, it's just going to be him and Lily doing the heisting.

'Remus and I don't need to third and fourth wheel your little date,' Sirius says, completely ignoring the outraged look on James' face.

'This heist was _your idea_.' James says. 'Yours!'

'Yeah, _for you_. Do you really want to hook up with Lily while me and Remus are just standing around?'

'You really think we're going to hook up in Village when we're in the middle of stealing a waffle maker?'

'Look, I don't pretend to understand straight lust -'

James shoves him lightly. 'Oh, fuck off.'

He's annoyed that they're going alone, but, also, he thinks that Sirius might have a point that it's much better if he and Lily are going to be in this together. It'll mean that he gets to talk to Lily without Sirius making fun of him, at the very least, and that alone is appealing.

He's talked about Sirius enough times with Lily so he's sure she has a general idea, but James isn't even remotely sure that he's actually ready for them to meet yet.

They decide to meet up outside Village a little after midnight on Tuesday evening (the night that, James and Lily both agree, is the quietest night on campus) and they're both dressed, head to toe, in black clothing like they're getting ready to rob a bank.

Lily laughs and points down at their outfits. 'I can't believe that we're going full _Ocean's Eleven_ for a fucking waffle maker.'

'This is serious business, Evans,' James says. He's smiling at her and he knows he's flirting, but it's over a waffle maker so, really, it doesn't count as actual flirting.

'It's only serious because Sirius is fucking insane,' Lily says. She's smiling back, a kind of indulgent smile that James feels like he's going to be at the receiving end of more often than not. A kind of acknowledgement that whatever he's doing is stupid as hell but an amused acceptance of it all the same.

'To be fair to Sirius, I didn't exactly talk him out of it when he proposed it.'

Lily laughs and, fucking hell, James feels like he's been run through by the actual sun. 'You're fucking insane, too, then.'

James touches his hand to his chest. 'You wound me.'

She nudges his elbow with hers. 'You'll survive.'

'You didn't have to agree to heist with us,' James says. 'You must think this is, like, at least a _little_ exciting.'

'I really only want to be able to partake in the free waffles,' Lily says.

'I knew you were using me.'

He picks the lock on the front door - it's probably not the smartest way in, but the streetlamp out here is broken and this is the only way that James actually knows through the Village dining hall and he's pretty sure that getting lost is the last thing you want to do while heisting.

It's surprisingly easy to get inside - they're careful to close the doors gently behind them and they hop over the turnstiles instead of turning them, but otherwise, it's like any other day walking into the dining hall except the only light is from the streetlamps shining in through the windows.

'This can't be this easy,' Lily whispers. She's standing a little closer to James than he'd thought and the heat of her breath against his neck makes him shiver.

'Maybe we're just excellent heisters.'

James is three-quarters to believing that that's true when they get over to the table with the waffle maker and they realise that, in order to unplug the damn thing and get the cord, that they have to pull the table back from the wall.

'We can't drag it away from the wall,' James says, 'that'll be so loud.'

'We could lift it,' Lily says. The table's got the waffle maker and the enormous metal containers on it that, during the day are filled with batter and syrup. The table itself doesn't look heavy, but James is certain that it's going to be heavier than they think.

'Okay,' he says, and he walks around to the left side. 'You take that side, we'll lift on three.' They both take a moment to get their hands positioned and James counts backwards from three. It is heavier than it looks when they lift it, but they still manage to do it easily between the pair of them.

The issue, though, comes with the fact that the batter container wobbled against the table the minute they started picking it up.

'Fuck,' Lily says, and James sees her move one of her hands away to steady it. He almost tells her not to move her hand - he's not sure if she can hold one whole side of the table with one hand (he knows he probably wouldn't be able to) - but the table doesn't shift an inch as Lily moves to rest her hand on the container to stop it wobbling.

'Fuck, Evans,' James says as they take two careful steps out from the wall and, as gently as they can, set the table down onto the floor. 'Are you, like, the fucking Rock under there or something?'

She breaths a laugh. 'Something like that.'

And hell if that doesn't have James intrigued.

They've just managed to get the thing unplugged and shoved into the backpack (Sirius' backpack, because if Sirius wasn't going to come to the heist, he could at least end up with a backpack full of leftover waffle oil) when James hears the unmistakable sound of a radio going off — he can't tell how far away, but it sounds close — and every cell in his body goes cold.

'I think there's a campus cop here.' James shoves the bag with the waffle maker into Lily's hands and gives her back a small shove. 'Go.'

'I'm not leaving you -'

'You're not getting in trouble for me,' he says. The campus cop's radio goes off again down the hall and James lowers his voice. 'I'll make a diversion, go out the front door. I'm serious,' he adds, seeing the hesitant look on her face.

'No, you're James.'

He breathes a soft laugh, but, still, he puts his hand on her forearm again and gives her a small push. 'Go. For real.'

And she does.

But not before leaning over and kissing him softly first.

James is still stood, dumbstruck, for a few seconds after she pulls away, but then he hears the radio again and he remembers that he's, like, supposed to be causing a diversion.

He holds up his hand in farewell before he vaults over the pasta counter and disappears back into the kitchen. That, alone, he hopes will draw attention away from the front door, but he's sure that he's going to be the centre of attention once he knocks a metal spoon against the worktop.

Sure enough, a campus cop bursts into the kitchen through a back door James hadn't seen.

He's looking at James, eyebrow raised. 'What are you doing back here?'

'Oh, thank god you're here.' James makes his way slowly around the tables. 'I fell asleep at my table in the back and then when I woke up all the lights were off and I couldn't find my way out.'

'What's your name?'

He briefly thinks about lying, but it's probably too late at this point. And, anyway, it's not like it would be hard to pull up his student ID picture or something if this guy were really determined. 'James Potter. I'm a student here.'

The guy doesn't look much older than James, so James assumes he's one of those power-hungry students who signed up to be a campus cop in training. He looks at James for a long moment before he finally decides it's not worth dragging him all the way across campus to the police station.

'I'm going to escort you back to your residence. What dorm do you live in?'

'Marks Hall,' James says. He breathes a sigh of exaggerated relief. 'Thank you so much.'

And, really, James thinks that this might actually be his most shining performance. Massman, here he comes.

Until, that is, he's flopped down on his bed half an hour later and his phone pings with an email.

_From: Minerva McGonagall_

_To: James Potter_

_Subject: Meeting - Tomorrow, 9am_

_Mr Potter,_

_It's come to my attention that there's been an incident at the Village Dining Hall tonight — please report to my office at 9am tomorrow morning._

_Dr. McGonagall_

'Fuck,' he says. 'Mom is going to kill me.'

* * *

McGonagall eyes him, and if her expression had been sharp before, James is pretty sure that now it's like one of those giant icicles that sometimes fall and kill people in, like, Canada.

'You don't know anything?'

'Nope.' James shakes his head. 'I know I was in Village when I wasn't supposed to be, but that's it, Professor.' James touches a hand to his heart in a way that he hopes conveys sincerity.

McGonagall just carries on staring at him, evidently hoping that James is one of those people that can be tempted to talk by the dragging weight of silence.

James, though, has learnt well enough when he needs to shut the hell up — growing up with Sirius had at least taught him that (not that they use said skills outside of moments when they're about this close to getting expelled).

Finally, after a long silence, McGonagall heaves a heavy sigh.

'Very well. But if I hear differently from anyone else, Mr Potter, rest assured that I will be calling you back into my office.'

'Oh,' James says, already rising to his feet, 'naturally, Professor.'

He doesn't say that he's innocent of what she's accusing him of and he's sure she doesn't miss it. She's staring at him, her hands folded in front of her again, and even though he's standing and could very easily turn and just make his way out of her office, there's something about her expression that has him pinned to the spot.

'I don't know why you'd want that waffle maker anyway,' she says, and James swears that the corner of her mouth almost curls with a smile. 'It barely works.'

It takes everything James has to keep from cracking a smile. 'Does it?' he says instead, his voice ticking up at the end with what he hopes is naturally inflected surprise. 'That's a shame, they're delicious.'

This time, there's no mistaking McGonagall's near smile. 'They are indeed.'

And, before James ends up saying anything incriminating, he inclines his head and turns to make his way out of her office.

His phone pings with a text as he closes her office door and — christ — seeing her name there brings such a stupid smile to his face that James thinks Sirius might be a little right after all.

_Lily: guess who just got asked to cover the waffle maker thievery for the Trojan_

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://elanev91.tumblr.com/)!


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